Binding Choice: A Romantic Thriller

by Jessica Dale

  The door across the hall opened behind him. Our neighbor’s eyes went wide in her plump, wrinkled face as she got a side view of my outfit. Ducking her gray head, she scurried off down the hall, tugging her little dog behind her on a leash.

  I giggled, but then the dog whined, a soft keening sound.

  And suddenly the walls of the hallway were splashed with red.

  Blood. Monroe’s blood.

  Then Nick’s bloody face, coming at us in the glare of headlights.

  I shivered and did as my counselor had coached me, superimposing a big octagonal stop sign over the bloody images in my mind.

  “Are you sure, Erica?” Jules breathed out against my cheek. He didn’t call me Ricki anymore. Drew had ruined that too.

  One of his arms wound around my waist, held me close. My insides tingled.

  His other hand fumbled with the doorknob, finally managed to shove the door closed with a bang.

  I jerked a little and he loosened his grip, stepped back.

  “No!” I pushed myself tight against him. “This may be touch and go for a while, but it’s time.”

  He gave me a lopsided grin. “Touch and go?”

  I grinned back and dropped one hand to the bulge under his zipper. “No pun intended,” I whispered in my sexiest voice.

  His eyes went wide and he sucked in air. Then he leaned down and kissed me gently on the forehead.

  Heat coursed through me at the thought of what was to come... for many years to come.

  .

  <<>>

  AUTHOR’S NOTES

  If you enjoyed this story, please leave a short review on Amazon. Reviews help with sales, and sales keep the books coming! Also please check out my other offerings at http://darkardorpublications.com, and if you haven’t already done so, sign up for my newsletter there. You will receive a free novella, Ripples of Evil, the first in my new trilogy.

  We at Dark Ardor Publications take pride in putting out stories that are as free of errors as possible; therefore each of them is proofread multiple times by several people. But proofreaders are human. If you found any errors in this story, please email me at jessica@darkardorpublications.com so that I can get them corrected. Thanks so much!

  Heck, email me anyway! I love hearing from readers.

  Much gratitude to my beta readers, my critique partner, and my editor (I’m not naming names, lest they not want to be associated with my racy writing, but they know who they are!) All gave invaluable feedback that made this story better. Also a big thank you to my husband for his sharp eye for typos.

  .

  I apologize for the sudden twist from erotica to horror in the middle of this story, but if you are still reading, I’m assuming it didn’t bother you too, too much. Mind you, I am not anti-BDSM. But this story is intended to be a cautionary tale. Be careful who you hook up with if BDSM is your thing.

  Sadly, the number of psychopaths in our society has been rising. Twenty years ago they were less than 1% of the male population in the U.S.; today that figure is 3%. And that number is likely on the low side, since many psychopaths go undiagnosed.

  The official diagnosis is antisocial personality disorder and ASPD is 3 times more common in men than women. People with this disorder have no conscience and lack empathy for others. They are often thrill seekers who require more and more stimulation as time goes on.

  Let me cycle back to the statistics for a moment. Three percent of males means 3 out of every 100, or 1 out of every 33 men is a full-blown psychopath. Thus it is likely that at a good-sized party there will be at least one Drew.

  And psychopaths can be quite charming. They have learned how to manipulate people to get what they want.

  *shudder*

  Okay, on to slightly less gruesome topics. Drew’s gun is a Taurus Curve, with a built-in light and laser sight—small enough for glove box, purse or pocket, but still a quite lethal .380 caliber pistol. And it is quite funny looking.

  Hopkins House where Erica works is fictitious, but it is based on a couple of old mansions in Columbia, Maryland that have been repurposed as event venues. Oh, by the way, I don’t share Jules’s attitude toward Columbia. It’s one of my favorite towns in Maryland, although not as affordable as James Rouse had intended it to be.

  Please check out the future releases in the Binding Love series. Book 2 stars Prudence Parker. I haven’t quite settled on a title yet (leaning toward Binding Vows), but here is an excerpt:

  .

  PROLOGUE

  Pru

  How had I been so wrong?

  I stared, slack-jawed, at the man across the room, the man I’d thought I was going to marry. The past tense in my thoughts made my throat hurt.

  He’d been so kind and thoughtful... too good to be true, I’d thought, when we’d started dating.

  Well, I’d been right about that apparently.

  That man had disappeared as soon as I’d agreed to marry him, and had been replaced with a more irritable and controlling version of himself. But when I stood up for myself, he always backed down, apologized, blamed how stressful his work was at the moment.

  Until tonight, when I’d said no to his elaborate dinner plans. No, I was tired. I wanted to go someplace casual, where I could relax.

  And suddenly he’d morphed into this hulk, with shoulders hunched, fists clenched and a red mask of fury for a face.

  Greg took a long stride toward me, waving one of those fists. He cranked back his arm and swung at me.

  Fortunately, I am very agile and he was very drunk. I sidestepped and his momentum carried him on past me.

  The sound of breaking wood. I didn’t linger to discover whatever he had crashed into but bolted for the nearest door. His bedroom.

  I slammed the door and turned the lock, then grabbed the handle on one end of the old foot locker he kept at the end of the bed. I had no clue what was in it but it was heavy enough, I hoped, to stop him or at least slow him down.

  I dragged it over against the door, then turned to the dresser and my purse. Dumping it out on the bed, I grabbed my phone and punched in 911.

  He banged on the door. “Prudence! Damn it, open this door!” The door shivered under the onslaught of his pounding fist, but the lock held.

  “Police,” I said in answer to the dispatcher’s inquiry regarding the type of emergency. Apparently she could hear Greg too because she didn’t ask for details. I was surprised that my voice was relatively steady as I gave her the address.

  “Stay on the line with me,” she said. “The police are on the way.”

  “Okay.” That came out a lot shakier.

  More pounding and bellowing. “Prudence, open the fuckin’ door. Now!” I doubted the lock would have held without the foot locker there.

  I dropped the phone into my lap as I stared at that door, tears streaming down my face.

  It had been so, so good. He’d been quite gentlemanly the first few times we’d made love, and then he’d tentatively introduced the idea of some mild bondage.

  I’d been into that scene for years, but a friend had met up with the wrong guy, with disastrous consequences, so I’d sworn off the rough stuff.

  When he’d pulled out the leather cuffs and the cat-of-nine-tails I’d almost swooned. I’d thought I’d met the perfect man, one who could be really naughty in the bedroom but nice everywhere else.

  And then I’d said yes.

  .

  CHAPTER ONE

  Pru

  I blinked at the object in my hand, half hoping, half fearing it would disappear.

  Oh, shit! Then a frisson of something—I wasn’t sure what—ran down my spine.

  Wait! Does it really mean that? I grabbed up the package from the bathroom vanity counter and reread the directions. Yeah, two pink lines was right. Or wrong, depending on your perspective.

  Butterflies fluttered in my chest and stomach. I looked up at the mirror. A wide-eyed young woman stared back, her fair skin even paler than usual, her blonde hair
sticking out in all directions from where she’d tugged on it as she’d driven to the drugstore and back home again.

  Then the woman’s mouth turned up at the corners.

  The frisson ran through me again, riled up the butterflies. This time I gave it a label. Excitement.

  “Oh, shit,” I said out loud, but I couldn’t stop smiling. My voice echoed a little in the small room. There was nothing but the walls and porcelain fixtures, nothing soft to absorb the sound waves, not even a shower curtain around my old-fashioned footed bathtub.

  The room reflects my personality. I like to keep things simple.

  I snorted under my breath. So much for that.

  Life would be anything but simple from here on out.

  The butterflies in my stomach flapped harder, shifted to anxiety.

  I hate anxiety. Mother is the anxious one, not me. I am the calm one, the “problem-solver” my mother calls me, with the tiniest hint of a sneer in her voice.

  But I’d become a problem-solver out of necessity. If I focused on the problem and what to do about it, then I could tamp the anxiety down, pretend it wasn’t even there. And hide from the world the fact that I’m more like my mother than I ever care to admit.

  So what is the problem?

  I’m going to have a baby. The frisson of excitement again. The woman in the mirror grinned.

  No, that was not the problem. It was the cause of the problem...

  <<>>

  .

  I hope to have Pru’s story done in a couple of months. Please bear with me, I’m writing as fast as I can. :-) If you want to be notified when it’s coming out, please sign up for my newsletter at my website. (I only send out newsletters when I actually have news to share.)

  .

  About the Author: Jessica Dale has been a human resources administrator, mental health counselor, business owner and college professor. She now enjoys writing romantic suspense stories with a psychological twist, which will make your spine tingle in more ways than one!

  Readers can connect with her at http://darkardorpublications.com, on Facebook, or at jessica@darkardorpublications.com